Christmas Wishes
by CopperMinted
Summary: With her favorite holiday fast approaching, but no one to share it with her, Jo is sure Christmas won't be the same. But when a mysterious package arrives, there maybe some hope left for the broken-hearted. Post s4 eps10.


_Written as an aside to the Christmas episode that I was vastly disappointed with. _

_Jo lay on her side in front of her roaring fire, feeling the toastiness of the room and snuggling closer to the heat sources. _

_The one laying next to her, or rather _under_ her shifted slightly, being used to a colder temperature. Jo dragged her eyes lazily up the dark sweatpants, bare torso with some _fine, fine_ abs and up to a pair of darkly glinting blue eyes, half-shut. They watched her openly, emotions roiling through them as she matched the heady stare. _

_ Her own brown eyes soon matched his as she crawled up his chest to meet him halfway, where passion and intensity battled for dominance in their kiss. Jo straddled him, placing her hands on his chest to reach for a better angle as he ran his fingers through her lovely long hair that had been freed of its normal restraint, an evil thing called a scrunchie. _

_ His hands moved under the hem of her shirt…_ when Jo woke up to a whistling noise. Disoriented, it took her a second longer to remember where she was. After finding herself disappointingly not in the arms of one tall dark and handsome Donovan, but in her new house after the party at Café Diem that had lasted into the wee hours. She'd gone home somewhat early, before Zane, Carter, Allison and her family, Vincent, and Taggart. Henry and Grace had left sometime before her, as it was technically their "first" Christmas together and they wanted to make the best of it. Sitting at home in her new house by the fireplace, she'd just sat down to wait for the kettle to boil water for tea, when she must have fallen asleep. It was after all, 12:30 in the morning and she had had a full day, babysitting hyper scientists drunk off eggnog. Certainly not how she wanted to spend her first Christmas in the new timeline.

Shaking off the depressing direction in which those thoughts were headed, mainly, that she was alone, and missing a certain someone with whom she'd had a marshmallow fight with this time last year, and went to go check on her tea.

Once she'd settled back onto the couch to reflect upon how lonely she was this Christmas, the doorbell startled her. So much so, that some of her piping-hot tea landed on her hand that was gripping the mug. Surprised, Jo let loose a single swear word before setting the cup down gently and closing her eyes.

_Stupid,_ she thought,_ he's not going to be there, so get ahold of yourself before you lose it completely and go off the deep end. Others have already started noticing!_

Sighing, she made her way to the front door and opened it. Just a little bit disappointed it wasn't Zane, she grew steadily annoyed when there wasn't anyone there at all. Convinced it was a joke and about to turn around, something caught her eye.

There on the porch lay a box wrapped in plain brown paper. It looked hand delivered because there was no name, address or return address on it. In fact, there wasn't anything on it but some twine and tape.

It wasn't a particularly large box, but then, neither was it small. It was also not heavy.

Suspicious, Jo brought the box inside, convinced it was going to blow up or something similar. Living in Eureka, this would not be a surprise. But when she cut the twine and had taken the paper off the non-descript box, nothing happened. It sat on her couch like a normal box should behave.

Shivering slightly from the cold air the door let in, Jo wrapped a blanket around herself and opened the top.

Nestled inside, under a sheet of crumpled tissue paper, lay a pair of ballet slippers and two tickets to the _Nutcracker_ playing in Portland the next day.

Smiling softly, Jo bit her lip, on the verge of tears. Only Jack knew her well enough to know that she liked ballet a lot.

On that train of thought, she looked for a tag or note of some sort. Finding a small, folded piece of paper in one of the shoes, she opened it, expecting Jack's curly handwriting.

Instead, in familiar small print, it read, _Merry Christmas Jo-Jo. From your secret santa. _

Perhaps this first Christmas wouldn't be _so_ bad afterall…

_I had to have something about them. They can't NOT do a Christmas episode and leave out the biggest (in my opinion) couple! Ten seconds does NOT qualify in my mind! _

_Had to have a happy, hopeful, ending too…. it just breaks my heart…_


End file.
